Walmart products to be made available via Google Express
Peel the sticky notes off the refrigerator door.
Now Google will be able to order your Walmart purchases for you.
Starting next month, shoppers will be able to order items from detergent to orange juice from Google Express.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, and Google, the world’s most popular search engine, are teaming up to challenge Amazon’s growing dominance in online commerce. Shoppers will be able to choose from hundreds of thousands of Walmart products through the Google Express website, mobile app or voice-activated Google Home.
Walmart joins other major retailers, including Costco, Whole Foods Market and Bed, Bath & Beyond that are part of Google’s shopping and delivery service.
Executives from Walmart say the retailer will have more items available than any other on Google Express and offer a personalized version of the service by linking their Walmart account to Google Express. The service can then quickly locate the brand, size and amount of a household good — from shampoo to toilet paper — the customer previously bought or make suggestions based on those past purchases.
Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, says this is the first time the company’s customers will be able to order on Google Home.
“I think this is really about trying to find an opportunity to simplify people’s lives and help them shop in a way that maybe they’d not yet imagined,” Lore said.
The Google connection “allows customers to easily reorder anything that they bought in a brickand-mortar Walmart store or online pretty easily and ... we think there’s some pretty specific use cases where voice will be the preferred means of shopping over handheld devices or computers.”
The Walmart- Google Express combination is sure to ramp up the rivalry with Amazon. Walmart is already trying to leverage its hundreds of stores to enable shoppers to pick up items they’ve bought online.
The pairing with Walmart also represents a shot across Amazon’s bow by Google as more and more people bypass the search engine to start their browsing on the e-commerce site instead.
Google Express was launched in 2013 to make Google the top go-to destination for those browsing and buying online. But the service has hit several speed bumps, including an unsuccessful move into selling perishables and turnover by the executives overseeing it.
In February, Google Express integrated Google Home, enabling shoppers to use the Assistant on the voice-activated device just as they might use “Alexa” on Amazon’s Echo speaker.
Google will offer the same personalization initially only available to Walmart customers to other merchants “over time,” Google Express general manager Brian Elliot said.
Google also announced Wednesday it will be opening up Google Express to more shoppers by getting rid of membership fees. Google had charged $95 a year, similar to Amazon’s annual Prime membership, or $10 a month, to belong to the service.
Now customers just have to place orders that amount to more than each store’s minimum to get free delivery within one to three days.
Walmart heated up its rivalry with Amazon last year when it bought Lore’s start-up Jet.com for $3.3 billion and placed the former Amazon exec in charge of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce strategy.
Google is also trying to fend off Amazon by developing its own shopping and delivery service.
Google Express has been instructive for Google, Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said, though he doubts it’s having much of an impact on Amazon.
“That said, I think these will each become more important aspects of Google’s revenue model over the long term, in particular as more searches migrate to voice platforms, where transactions may stand in for advertising, and as Google shifts more effort towards local commerce and advertising,” he said.